Major League Baseball is now busily selling the idea that Commissioner Bud Selig has truly gotten religion on performance enhancing drugs. Gone is the commissioner who chose not to see the swelling body parts of the turn-of-the-millennium sluggers.

But the other, and perhaps more important, development in Selig's evolution is he appears to have truly gotten religion on working with, rather than against, the powerful Major League Baseball Players Association—with the exception of Alex Rodriguez of the New York Yankees, of course, but more on him later.

With more than 40 years of experience in baseball, the commissioner now clearly understands that combating the union and its members head-on doesn't usually turn out very well for management.

The players prevailed in a series of labor standoffs from 1972-95, while head-to-head combat over discipline or other contract disputes has usually resulted in an appeal to a neutral arbitrator and a decision in favor of the union.

In addition to producing 20 years of work-stoppage-free baseball, Selig's embrace of cooperation and negotiation manifested itself during the final weeks of the investigation into the player connections with Biogenesis, the defunct Florida anti-aging clinic that according to baseball dispensed PEDs to more than a dozen players.

Baseball's investigators didn't have failed drug tests but they were able to compile enough documentary evidence and witness testimony to establish that the players violated the sport's collectively bargained Joint Drug Agreement. And since the discovery of the violations weren't the result of a positive test or possession, Selig had wide latitude in deciding what penalties he wanted to hand down. (An off-season assignment for Bud: Figure out why the game's ballyhooed testing program failed to catch most of the players under question).

But instead of a rash declaration of outrage and excessive suspensions, baseball executives picked up the phone and called leaders of the players association last Tuesday to discuss the evidence they had and the discipline they had in mind. They discussed treating most of the players as first-time offenders according to the guidelines of the CBA—50 games for a first violation, 100 for a second, and a lifetime ban for a third. MLB gave the players until Sunday to agree to the penalties without appealing.

Selig didn't have to do that. He could have simply announced the suspensions and given the players union the proscribed three days to appeal, a scenario that seemed likely only weeks ago. Instead, Selig involved the union in the process, and largely avoided what could have been months of litigation and the chance for the players to beat the suspensions on an evidentiary technicality.

Players union chief Michael Weiner said in a statement the penalties "were arrived at only after hours of intense negotiations between the bargaining parties, the players and their representatives." For three players under investigation who had failed previous drug tests and already served suspensions, their connections to Biogenesis weren't treated as second offenses.

So what of Rodriguez? Selig suspended him for 211 games, the rest of this year and all of next year, for allegedly using and possessing "numerous forms of prohibited performance-enhancing substances, including Testosterone and Human Growth Hormone, over the course of multiple years," and for attempting to obstruct the investigation. The punishment doesn't skew with history or anything proscribed in the bargaining agreement.

Rodriguez, who stands to lose more than $30 million and previously admitted to using PEDs from 2001-2003, is appealing the suspension and will play until it is heard. He explained that he was "fighting for my life" and the legitimacy of the player-discipline process. Weiner called Rodriguez's penalty "way out of line."

The fight should last for months, and baseball will have to somehow legitimize the unprecedented penalty. Some habits do indeed die hard.

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